


Little Bird

by by_nina



Series: Royai Week 2020 [5]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Best Friends, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Young Royai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24715186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/by_nina/pseuds/by_nina
Summary: The years to come are already bound to be empty without a friend.“I hope you don’t wait for me.” Day 5 - Picture prompt; seated couple for Royai Week 2020.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Series: Royai Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1779925
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	Little Bird

**Author's Note:**

> My warmest thanks to everyone who gave their love throughout Royai Week! I’ll see you all soon for the big bang. x

Morning comes with the soft cooing of a bird in the Hawkeye house. The sound startles and awakens Roy, who had fallen asleep in the living room with his face pressed to an open book. It takes him only a second to regain his senses, having woken up so suddenly due to the bird, now nursing a slight ache from the discomfort of his sleeping position over the coffee table. He sits up, and he hears a few rushed footsteps and the snap of a door closing. The cooing disappears, and then there is silence.

Roy quickly rises and follows where the sound had gone. It leads him to the back door of the kitchen not far away. He peeks through the glass pane of the door, soon glimpsing someone at the edge of the wood behind the house. The master’s young daughter, Riza—she looks over her shoulder as if wary of being watched, back hunched forward over something in her hand that Roy cannot see. Suddenly, with soft sprightly steps, she disappears into the wood.

Confusion and mild panic rise within Roy. He hasn’t been in the wood before, doesn’t know if the girl is even _allowed_ to be out like this, much less when half the sky is still dark and twinkling with its remaining stars. The master would kill him if anything happened to her.

Roy realizes that he is barefoot only when he has stepped out onto the dewy grass, felt the wetness and crunching beneath his feet. The sun hasn’t risen high enough yet to truly break through the fog, and it chills him, having been used to much warmer mornings in Central. He briefly considers going back into the house to put on his house slippers and a coat, but the sound of her footsteps is quickly fading ahead of him. He grits his teeth and gives chase.

To his relief, the wood isn’t quite as deep as he thought it would be, even though it is still a bit of a shock for someone around whom greenery had been scant growing up. Roy trudges through a three-minute walk’s worth of slick dry leaves and entangled twigs on the forest floor before he comes to a clearing—and she turns quickly when she notices his arrival, startled and indignant.

“Why are you here?” she snaps. Roy takes an automatic step back, surprised at the loudness of her voice.

“I-I’m sorry—I just saw you going out the back and wanted to make sure you were safe—”

Riza exhales and pouts. “I can take care of myself, Mr. Mustang. You should go back before Father wakes up.”

He misses her command as his eyes find her hands clasped in front of her. At last he finds the source of the cooing that had awakened him—a small dove, blinking and trembling slightly in her grasp. Roy also notices the way she is holding the poor creature; her wrists and knuckles appear tense, but taper out into gentler fingertips that sink into the dove’s feathers.

“What are you doing with that bird?”

She glances down at the dove and turns away defensively to hide it from view, even as her shoulders relax slightly. “Nothing. I’m just setting it free.”

He ignores her attempts to brush him off; curiosity has taken hold of him. He has never seen a dove this close, much less in the hands of a child like her. Back home, the doves and pigeons in the city square allowed visitors and passersby to sprinkle bread around them for feeding, but would always quickly fly away and perch out of reach whenever they were approached. He never even knew what people wanted to do with the birds once they had run through the dispersing flock. But here, he could tell by the tone of her voice and the careful way it sits in her hands that it is there for its benefit, and not because she had simply wanted it for herself.

“He was injured,” she suddenly says. Roy has leaned in to take a close look at the bird. “He flew into my window last night with a bad-looking wing. But I think he’s doing better now.”

“Oh. And you took care of it?”

There is a shadow of a small, fond smile on her lips now. She strokes the dove’s head with one finger. “I guess you could say that. I kept him in a box in my room, left out some water and seeds for him. You shouldn’t really watch a bird or pet it when it’s healing because you might scare it or make it worse. But then he started hopping around and flapping his wings a little, so now I think he can go back out and fly.”

Roy blinks at her. “Have you done this before?”

She nods. “With smaller birds. I’ve never taken care of a dove before.”

Slowly, she opens her hands, and the dove ruffles its feathers once before hopping out onto the surface of a wide, flat rock. It fumbles around, seems to turn and look at her, then finally takes off and makes a short flight into the branches of a nearby tree. It perches on one, then transfer to another.

Riza lights up as she watches the dove. Roy follows her gaze upwards.

After a while, her face falters into a slightly wistful expression, but not one that is entirely unhappy. She looks pointedly at Roy. “This was my secret spot, you know. No one’s ever been here before.”

He looks around. There is more to the spot than the wide rock to sit on; the clearing comes up to the edge of a small cliff overlooking a grassy meadow colored by several patches of wildflowers. The meadow spreads out to a small lake; farther along is another wood, then the mountains. It offers one of the best views he has seen so far during his short stay in the East.

“I’m sorry I followed you here.”

She smiles again, much more softly this time. “If you can keep the bird a secret from Father, then you can come here too whenever you like, Mr. Mustang.”

Roy cannot help but return the friendly look she gives him.

“Just call me Roy.”

* * *

Her father’s apprentice soon becomes her best friend.

Roy turns out to be less like the uppity, self-absorbed city boy Riza had first judged him to be, and more like someone she might have already known closely over many years. He learns very quickly about caring for birds outside of the alchemy lessons he has with her father, as more hurt and sick birds come in through her window over the next couple of years. Finches, jays, sparrows—they always seem to find their way to her room, and she cares for each one diligently as he watches. On days that her father allows him to go into town, he buys medicine and supplies for tending to the birds.

Nights of caring for injured birds turn into quiet talks that last until the odd hours of the morning. More than once, they fall asleep in her room in the middle of a conversation, shortly awakened by their patient’s sudden chirping. There is an ease in talking about him, an understanding she has never known with any of the children in their town. A greater sense of empathy than she has ever gotten from her own father.

All too soon, Roy turns seventeen, and something changes in him, as if a fire has been ignited in him by a new sense of purpose. They have talked about their ambitions before, and she has always known that the lessons with her father would end and he would leave to seek something else, but she finds no comfort in that knowledge, or in their unspoken mutual attempt to forget about his departure until it looms closer than ever.

Riza begins to miss him sooner than she had hoped she would.

* * *

“Roy?”

She peers around the wall at him as he studies in the living room, careful not to disturb the robin in the box between her arms. In the moment before he looks up, as he is poring religiously over his notebooks and some reading materials from her father’s study, she sees for the first time just how much he has changed since the morning he followed her to her— _their_ secret spot. Sharper features, an intensified focus… a grown young man.

And then he does look up, and Riza is comforted by the warm familiarity of his expression. Roy sees the box right away; he needs no further explanation. He rises from the floor and follows Riza as she slinks into the kitchen, cradling the box as she had every other bird that came before the robin.

“Master Hawkeye?” he whispers.

“Preoccupied. I’ve just handed him a stack of old scientific journals that he hasn’t read in years.”

They keep their footsteps light and quiet until they reach the same old wood, and then the walk up to the clearing feels both like walking back in time and getting to know each other all over again. Roy asks Riza about the robin in the box; she asks if his alchemy lessons have been going well lately, and how he has been dealing with her father, and what else he is working on. Sunset is fast approaching now; the light turns dim beneath the canopy of the wood, and the shrill, steady chirping of cicadas fills the air.

Neither one mentions that this bird is will be their last.

At the clearing, they take in how much more colorful the meadow has become in the past couple of years, if overgrown. The wildflowers sway in the wind, and the water in the lake ripples as it reflects the sun setting behind the mountains in the distance. Riza sits on the flat rock, then Roy takes his place next to her. She gently sets the box on the ground between their feet, cups the robin gently in her hands, and raises it slowly in the direction of the meadow. It hops up; it shifts its weight on its feet; it sings a short series of notes in her hands; it takes off, and then it is gone.

“He’ll be all right.”

Riza imagines how she must look to Roy, staring far too long at the spot in the tall grass behind which the robin had disappeared. She can’t imagine that she will cry now, when she has cried very few times in her life, and never in front of anyone else. Never over the birds she has had to let go of after caring for them. After all, she has never longed for any of them to stay.

Why would she heal their wings if they were never meant to fly?

“I know he will. I’m happy for him.” She pauses for a moment. “I’m happy for you.”

Riza only wishes she could say this more sincerely.

A flock of birds suddenly emerges from the grass and soars up into a formation circling in the sky. Behind the clearing, birdsong rises from the trees and fills the space around them. They look up to find small birds of every color and every shape calling out to one another, breaking through leaves and branches, bringing the forest to life in a way that neither of them has seen or heard before.

“It’s amazing, what you’ve done for them,” says Roy.

“You’ve helped me care for them too.” Her voice turns small. “I’ll miss you while you’re gone.”

Riza waits for him to respond—hopes that one person in her life will at last care for her in the same way she has cared for them. If he doesn’t, she doesn’t know when she will have a chance at it again. The years to come are already bound to be empty without a friend.

“I hope you don’t wait for me.”

For a moment, she is farther from the birds, further from him than ever.

But his voice is gentle and low when he speaks again, like the coo of a dove.

“I hope you fly, like they do.”


End file.
